by Maruška
We demand more than sympathy, we want ambitious climate action from the EU NOW!
A year ago, in Warsaw, on the first day of COP19, we mobilised for the Philippines. Typhoon Haiyan had killed thousands of people, bringing Philippino negotiator Yeb Saño to tears in the plenary hall of the UN climate talks. “How many more?” our signs read.
A year before in Brussels during the Doha talks, we had organised 3 actions following typhoon Bopha, one of the strongest ever to have hit the country.
This year, as the Lima climate talks opened, history repeated itself for the third time: the world witnessed the formation of yet another super-typhoon in the Pacific ocean – typhoon Hagupit, the strongest typhoon of 2014 – which displaced more than 500 000 people.
It is striking to notice how these events develop in parallel. Striking too to compare the catastrophic and deadly first effects of climate change, with the ineffective and unjust political measures negotiated in the climate talks.
As European youth, we are most unnerved by the new EU climate package, which proposes a mere 40% emissions reduction by 2030. The EU has already achieved its 2020 objective of 20%, and it refuses to do significantly more, turning its back on what science and equity demand: an 80% reduction.
The climate crisis is spinning out of control. Nature is sending us multiple and timely warnings. Why aren’t we raising our targets and ambition? How many more deaths and tragedies must the people suffer before real ambition is to be shown from the global North, historically responsible in the climate crisis?
We stand in solidarity with the people of the Philippines. More than sympathiy, we need real solidarity, climate justice now!
